Hearthfire, page 16
Sart decided she’d had quite enough. The balance of risk had tipped away from her benefit. She had to get away, and she had to do it now.
She bowed her head contritely and lifted two fingers to her lips to indicate thanks, her mind rushing through possibilities.
“Good little halmer,” Barit crooned. “Get up.”
Sart rose to her feet. She couldn’t quite tell if Barit and his band were very stupid or very smart. They’d caught her, to be sure, but they hadn’t thought to check her for weapons, only taken her shortsword and belt knife that had been in plain sight. They’d left her pack unopened—not that she had anything of value they could find in it—and they hadn’t posted a guard for her. As she stood, waiting for Barit’s next command, she raised her hand to her swelling cheek. Her eye felt puffy and hot, and the lids were starting to tighten. If she didn’t move soon, the wound would obscure her vision.
She was glad he’d missed her nose. She liked her nose.
The wind blew again from the north today, bringing with it that same scent of dust from Sands, that summer dry heat that took over so much of the land beyond Crevasses. Sart felt the wind pool around her, gathered it to her, took it into herself. Her pack sat behind Tark a short distance, and her shortsword’s hilt protruded from its scabbard on a pile of supplies a bit beyond that. She followed Tark toward that pile, keeping her eyes watchful to see if she could spot her belt knife. She liked that knife.
Tark led her past the mound of packs to a lashed bundle about the length of a child who had seen ten harvests, though half as wide. The bundle was wrapped in waxed canvas and secured with leather straps. Sart let the feel of the wind wash away the memory of Barit’s fingers tangled in her hair and thought out her options. She couldn’t fight ten rovers, not alone. Even five at a time would be too much, with Sart exhausted from a night without sleep and maintaining the illusion on the false halm knives. Too risky. She had to thin them out.
Sart hung back from the bundle, staying near the pile of supplies where her shortsword sat like pillaged loot. She supposed it was.
There wasn’t much within reach that she could use. Her sword alone would only provoke the type of fight she didn’t want. She had to do something to tip the balance of risk back in her favor. Surly, she wished she had real skill at the halmer’s craft. A halm knife or two wouldn’t go amiss.
A glint of bronze stood out from the supply pile, a curve of smooth metal. A horn.
Tark busied himself with the long bundle, undoing the straps of leather and peeling back layers of waxed canvas to reveal lengths of halm. Enough for all the weapons Barit had listed and more—they had planned this. Sart thought of the rover leader Barit had mentioned to Kahs—Wyt?—and made a note to pass that information on to Culy if she ever made it to hyr. Glancing over her shoulder, Sart saw Barit and the others examining the false halm knives with triumphant faces. Mind whirring like a spinner’s wheel, she bent, kneeling in the damp ground. She tugged the brass horn from the pile and pulled on the wind that ruffled her hair. She imagined the wind’s source, far to the north. Picturing its path across the leagues, she closed her eyes and saw the land just to the north, over a rise in the trail. Sart brought the horn to her lips, bending so the pile of supplies hid her from all view but Tark’s, and he busied himself only with the parcel of halm.
Sart blew on the horn, the wind humming around her. The sound rose, clear and strong and…distant.
No sound rang through the land around her, only blared overland from the north, like the wind, carrying with it a threat.
Tark dropped a chunk of halm with a clatter, and Barit let out a yell from the campfire. Two of the knifers and one of the swords went running northward on swift legs. That left seven rovers for her to dispense with. Tark’s eyes were on the north, and with one smooth motion, Sart unsheathed her sword from the supply pile and, with two long strides, buried it between Tark’s shoulder blades. Yanking it back out, she drew it across his neck, and he died with a gurgle. Bright red blood splashed across the newly uncovered whiteness of the halm. He had a dagger at his belt, and Sart bent, unbuckling his belt with one hand, edging herself behind a tree trunk. The tree’s limbs were covered in bark-rot, but one half of the tree bore bright green leaves. Life and death sharing one trunk.
Sart buckled Tark’s belt around her middle and then moved out from behind the tree, keeping in a low waddle, listening for any sounds of approach. She unsheathed the dagger and wielded it in her right hand, point low along with the shortsword in her left. Wishing she had time to rummage through the supply pile, Sart skirted it. Her heart pounded in her chest with a steady thumping. She drew again on the wind and clashed her sword and dagger together. Again the sound seemed to echo far away, like a distant battle. Her mind still full of the buzzing of magic, Sart sucked in a deep breath. Her blood danced in her veins in spite of the fatigue she felt.
Kahs and Barit stood near the fire, both looking into the north. No one had yet noticed Tark, and Sart felt a swell of relief.
A shout made her spin to her right, where one of the saber-wielding women stalked toward her, eyes blazing. The woman had a deep scar down one cheek, and Sart felt a grin spread across her face. “Want one to match?”
The woman yelled, charging at Sart. Sart flitted to the side and parried the first slash of the woman’s saber with her shortsword, driving her dagger into the side of the woman’s neck. Barit saw her then, and his snarl of rage bellowed through the camp.
Sart looked behind her. Seeing no one, she skipped backward in a zig-zag pattern, angling herself toward her pack. Two of Barit’s people gone and two dead. That left five for her to deal with. She saw Barit and Kahs, the other saber-holder, and one densely muscled knifer visible a bit ahead of her through the trees. Only a crack of a twig behind her made her turn to see the man with the sickle-sword coming toward her. He moved quickly, and Barit and Kahs closed in on her. Sart searched for Kahs’s bow and didn’t see it; either sy had left it unstrung and useless, or sy had set it down not expecting trouble. Either way, Sart was thankful for that reprieve.
Barit spat something at her, and Sart darted out of the middle of the three incoming attackers. Barit still held one of her false blades in one hand, and she tried her best not to look at it. He didn’t know. The man with the sickle-sword moved like fluid over the land, cutting off Sart’s retreat.
The two who had run off to investigate the horn call could return at any moment, Sart knew. She felt a grim smile spread across her face. She hoped Culy would forgive her if she died.
She had to stay out of Barit’s way. That knife would be his choice weapon; that she knew. Sart dropped into a roll just as the sickle-sword whistled through the air toward her, swung in a wide arc by its wielder. She tumbled across the ground and leaped to her feet, darting toward Kahs. Sy hadn’t gotten hys bow, and Sart came up mere feet from hyr, spinning and landing a kick in the middle of Kahs’s stomach. The impact sent the archer flying backward, and even before sy hit the ground, Sart was on hyr, stabbing her dagger into hys draw arm just below the wrist. Kahs screamed.
Sart sprang away, but Barit caught her sword arm. The false halm knife punched into her ribcage like a fist.
It crumbled to dust.
Barit’s surprise loosened his grip on her arm, and she pounded her knee into his groin. Snapping her leg back, she kicked him in the kneecap. He crumpled to the ground, swearing. Breath leaping in Sart’s throat, she whirled to face the sickle-sword owner. Whispering a string of words, Sart pulled again on the wind, swirling it around the man’s head so the sound of her whispers would wrap around his ears. He shook his head, eyes darting to and fro as if he could shake them off. He advanced on her, and in his eyes Sart saw the certainty that she was to blame for the words in his ears. She smiled at him, showing her teeth, her whispers still hissing from her mouth in a string of nonsense words.
His sickle-sword flashed out, and she parried it, striking out with her dagger. It sliced into his shoulder, and he drew back and slashed at her again with his sword. Sart ducked below the sword and swung her leg around, cutting his leg out from under him. He stumbled to the side, but righted himself quickly. Sart reassessed the man, warily hanging back. She didn’t want to end up hooked on that sickle of his. Barit clawed at the dirt, still cursing. Kahs had torn a strip from hys shirt and tied it off around hys bleeding arm.
A wave of dizziness crashed over Sart, and she stopped the whispers. She used the moment of disorientation in the sickle-sword’s owner to dart forward and stab at his unprotected middle. He spun out of the way, clumsily swinging his sword at her. Sart parried with her dagger and struck, not at his middle, but at his leg. Her short sword, wielded in her left hand, swung out around his right knee. She felt it make contact with the back of his leg, and she pulled it toward her with a sharp motion that left the blade bloody and sent him falling to the ground. Sart kicked his sickle-sword out of his hand, stomping on his wrist and landing a kick on the side of his head. His eyes glazed and rolled backward. She leaped toward Kahs and did the same, her foot finding a target just above Kahs’s ear.
Striding toward Barit, she stepped over his crumpled form until she fully mimicked his posture with her earlier. She leveled her sword point at his throat.
“The day I see you again is the day you die,” Sart said.
The ball of her foot slammed into his chin.
She relieved the rovers of as many weapons as she could carry, as well as two waterskins and a large bundle of dried meat. Finding Kahs’s bow behind a tree, Sart stooped to slash the string with a twang. She worked as quickly as she could, knowing it wouldn’t be long before the rovers who had hurried to investigate the horn blow to the north returned. The final rover who had stayed at the camp saw her, but made no move to engage her. She gave him a look that said she commended his intelligence. He thumbed his bottom lip, face grim, but said nothing.
Her pack was heavy as she left, walking in the creek bed to disguise her footprints. Sart was sure she hadn’t seen the last of these rovers, but with several of them dead and others injured, they wouldn’t be able to catch her, even as tired as she was.
She scratched the halmer brand from her cheek as she walked, flakes of days-dried mud dropping into the murky creek.
Sart considered that lesson learned. Her nails felt good on her face.
CARIN HAD managed to keep conversation to a minimum for nearly an entire moon. She saw the questions in Ryd’s eyes often, and sometimes he would open his mouth as if to speak, but he never voiced them. For that, she was thankful. She had no need of discussing something even she did not understand. Her body hummed like a struck dulcimer string, and when she sat still enough, she felt as though she might gather that hum until even Ryd could hear it. He seemed unaware of her state, though he still treated her with wariness as though she might collapse again. Carin wasn’t entirely sure he was wrong.
They had finished the last of the food she had packed turns before, and Carin thought she would have gladly traded one of her hands for a single pocket of Dyava’s making. With each league she and Ryd covered, her life in Haveranth seemed to recede like a dream more than simple distance.
In the bloom turn of Gather, the moon’s fullness floating through the azure summer sky with her sister trailing beside her, Carin realized they were not alone.
The feeling came first as a hunch, the woods around them growing sometimes too quiet with even the buzzing of insects fading before resuming as if the animals had been startled into silence. The next day, Carin heard the death-scream of a saiga and felt sure it had not died at the teeth of a hunting tiger. She motioned to Ryd to walk beside her.
“I think we are being followed,” she said. The very notion of it felt ludicrous, but then, had anyone told her in the summer before last harvest that she would be walking westward with Ryd, Nameless and exiled, she would have thought the person had gotten into the sparkleaf and mixed it with fermented goat’s milk to cause hallucinations.
Ryd’s face told her he didn’t believe her, and Carin shrugged.
The next night clouds rolled in and it rained. Carin sat beneath a maha tree, attempting to start a fire with flint and tinder that would not catch. Carin sat cross-legged on wet ground, half on a tree root and half on dirt. Frustration made her want to throw her flint into the Bemin. She guarded the small pile of tinder, dried sycamore leaves she had plucked and left beside the fire in the days before, and grasses she had done the same with and brushed them with fish oil. The sparks from the flint fell on the tinder and smoldered into nothingness. Ryd left the camp to search for dry wood to use and had not returned, and Carin felt dampness seep through her trousers, wetting her skin.
Surly, she struck her flint again. Three sparks landed on the tinder, and she exhaled slowly, watching them brighten into a deep orange before fading once more. She struck the flint again. Then again. Each time sparks landed, but they did not catch. At the birth of the new moons, they had run out of the last of the food from her roundhome in Haveranth. They had with them two snared rabbits and a string of fish, but without a fire, they would either have to eat them raw or watch them rot. The clouds above were heavy and grey, pregnant and bloated with rain waiting to fall. Carin knew these summer slogs; there were at least another two to three days in this one before the sun would again pierce through the cloud cover to dry the countryside. Until then, if they wanted to eat, they would have to find some way to start a fire.
Carin bundled the tinder beneath her cloak for a moment, cradling it in her hand. All through the previous season-cycle, she had tended the village hearth-home with Ryd and Lyah and Jenin, ensuring that the fire always burned and never went out. It was ritual that those preparing for their Journeying kept that vigil, making certain that the village had fire for cooking and light to work by. But now, far from the hearths of any village, Carin realized how easy her job had been. The village hearth was sheltered by a wide pavilion, kept covered where rain could not wet the embers and blocked from winds that could disrupt the flames. There was dry fuel in abundance, much like everything else in the village. Oils to quick start banked embers into roaring flames. Dry tinder that would quickly yield bursts of fire. Logs and dried dung and peat that burned hot and bright. So many options to keep a single fire going, and here in the wilderness, Carin could not get a ball of fluff to spark to flame with her flint.
She closed her eyes, fighting back frustration. If only rain could be useful in starting fires, she thought bitterly.
The hum she had felt since collapsing seemed to rise up around her with a murmur. She took several deep breaths. She would try again in a moment.
The tinder in her hand grew warm, then hot.
Carin’s eyes snapped open, and she dropped the tinder on the ground. A tiny flame licked from it.
Heart pounding, she quickly fed it small twigs she kept bundled in her rucksack. The flame rose and grew until she could stack larger kindling on top of it. When Ryd returned with a small armful of mostly dry branches, she had the fire crackling. Carin stared into it, her left hand turned palm up on her knee. A bright red spot covered the center of her hand, and it stung like she had placed her bare skin on a hot pan.
“You got it started,” Ryd said. “Well done.”
Carin nodded, then closed her fist to cover the red mark.
They cooked all the meat that night and feasted, each eating half a rabbit and some wrinkled Early Bird apples they had found on a tree. The apples had been mushy and too sweet, but Carin made herself choke hers down anyway. The autumn apples would be starting to go to fruit soon, but Carin didn’t think they would come across many apple trees on their path westward. As they bedded down to sleep that night, Carin traced the red patch on her palm with one finger. No sparks had caught on that tinder; she knew that as well as she knew the path of the sun across the sky. That flame had come from her. How, she didn’t know. She didn’t know magic.
For the first time in several turns, she remembered the scroll Lyah had given her. When Ryd shook her to take over his watch—she hadn’t managed to sleep—she waited until his chest rose and fell with even rhythm and dug the scroll out from her rucksack, using the dim light of the small fire to read.
Much of the scroll said things she already knew, about the origins of Haveranth and the branches of magic Lyah had described. But something caught her eye. Lyah had mentioned that magic needed a catalyst to work, but she had never mentioned what that might be. In the scroll, she had written that the catalyst was different for everyone. A death in the family, or an immense trauma. Murder. Carin shuddered at that thought, of a murderer in possession of magic. It made her think of Jenin and hys killer and whether or not the hand that had wielded the knife against hyr now had unlocked some ability to twist reality with magic power. She tried to come up with a common thread between the examples Lyah had listed. Death seemed to be one, though trauma did not necessitate the death of anyone to be traumatic. Perhaps it was simply change, an immense personal change. For some, murder would be a simple thing—again Carin shuddered to consider the type of person for whom taking another’s life would be a simple thing—but for others it would alter their entire being.
The more she thought about it, the less she understood. As the rain around her grew hazy with the light of the coming dawn, Carin thought of her collapse again. What was becoming Nameless if not an immense personal change? Everyone was different; Ryd’s choice to leave Haveranth was not motivated by the same thoughts as Carin’s. They had both chosen, but chosen differently. It had yet led them to a similar path.
She thought of dyupahsy, potential. The possibility in each seed to become whatever it would. Had this potential been in her all along? Carin wondered if potential could wither and die or simply shift. Her love for Dyava, for Lyah, for her mother. For the home she had crafted with her own hands. When a villager died in Haveranth, their dwelling was burned to return them to the earth. Was that what would happen to hers?
She bowed her head contritely and lifted two fingers to her lips to indicate thanks, her mind rushing through possibilities.
“Good little halmer,” Barit crooned. “Get up.”
Sart rose to her feet. She couldn’t quite tell if Barit and his band were very stupid or very smart. They’d caught her, to be sure, but they hadn’t thought to check her for weapons, only taken her shortsword and belt knife that had been in plain sight. They’d left her pack unopened—not that she had anything of value they could find in it—and they hadn’t posted a guard for her. As she stood, waiting for Barit’s next command, she raised her hand to her swelling cheek. Her eye felt puffy and hot, and the lids were starting to tighten. If she didn’t move soon, the wound would obscure her vision.
She was glad he’d missed her nose. She liked her nose.
The wind blew again from the north today, bringing with it that same scent of dust from Sands, that summer dry heat that took over so much of the land beyond Crevasses. Sart felt the wind pool around her, gathered it to her, took it into herself. Her pack sat behind Tark a short distance, and her shortsword’s hilt protruded from its scabbard on a pile of supplies a bit beyond that. She followed Tark toward that pile, keeping her eyes watchful to see if she could spot her belt knife. She liked that knife.
Tark led her past the mound of packs to a lashed bundle about the length of a child who had seen ten harvests, though half as wide. The bundle was wrapped in waxed canvas and secured with leather straps. Sart let the feel of the wind wash away the memory of Barit’s fingers tangled in her hair and thought out her options. She couldn’t fight ten rovers, not alone. Even five at a time would be too much, with Sart exhausted from a night without sleep and maintaining the illusion on the false halm knives. Too risky. She had to thin them out.
Sart hung back from the bundle, staying near the pile of supplies where her shortsword sat like pillaged loot. She supposed it was.
There wasn’t much within reach that she could use. Her sword alone would only provoke the type of fight she didn’t want. She had to do something to tip the balance of risk back in her favor. Surly, she wished she had real skill at the halmer’s craft. A halm knife or two wouldn’t go amiss.
A glint of bronze stood out from the supply pile, a curve of smooth metal. A horn.
Tark busied himself with the long bundle, undoing the straps of leather and peeling back layers of waxed canvas to reveal lengths of halm. Enough for all the weapons Barit had listed and more—they had planned this. Sart thought of the rover leader Barit had mentioned to Kahs—Wyt?—and made a note to pass that information on to Culy if she ever made it to hyr. Glancing over her shoulder, Sart saw Barit and the others examining the false halm knives with triumphant faces. Mind whirring like a spinner’s wheel, she bent, kneeling in the damp ground. She tugged the brass horn from the pile and pulled on the wind that ruffled her hair. She imagined the wind’s source, far to the north. Picturing its path across the leagues, she closed her eyes and saw the land just to the north, over a rise in the trail. Sart brought the horn to her lips, bending so the pile of supplies hid her from all view but Tark’s, and he busied himself only with the parcel of halm.
Sart blew on the horn, the wind humming around her. The sound rose, clear and strong and…distant.
No sound rang through the land around her, only blared overland from the north, like the wind, carrying with it a threat.
Tark dropped a chunk of halm with a clatter, and Barit let out a yell from the campfire. Two of the knifers and one of the swords went running northward on swift legs. That left seven rovers for her to dispense with. Tark’s eyes were on the north, and with one smooth motion, Sart unsheathed her sword from the supply pile and, with two long strides, buried it between Tark’s shoulder blades. Yanking it back out, she drew it across his neck, and he died with a gurgle. Bright red blood splashed across the newly uncovered whiteness of the halm. He had a dagger at his belt, and Sart bent, unbuckling his belt with one hand, edging herself behind a tree trunk. The tree’s limbs were covered in bark-rot, but one half of the tree bore bright green leaves. Life and death sharing one trunk.
Sart buckled Tark’s belt around her middle and then moved out from behind the tree, keeping in a low waddle, listening for any sounds of approach. She unsheathed the dagger and wielded it in her right hand, point low along with the shortsword in her left. Wishing she had time to rummage through the supply pile, Sart skirted it. Her heart pounded in her chest with a steady thumping. She drew again on the wind and clashed her sword and dagger together. Again the sound seemed to echo far away, like a distant battle. Her mind still full of the buzzing of magic, Sart sucked in a deep breath. Her blood danced in her veins in spite of the fatigue she felt.
Kahs and Barit stood near the fire, both looking into the north. No one had yet noticed Tark, and Sart felt a swell of relief.
A shout made her spin to her right, where one of the saber-wielding women stalked toward her, eyes blazing. The woman had a deep scar down one cheek, and Sart felt a grin spread across her face. “Want one to match?”
The woman yelled, charging at Sart. Sart flitted to the side and parried the first slash of the woman’s saber with her shortsword, driving her dagger into the side of the woman’s neck. Barit saw her then, and his snarl of rage bellowed through the camp.
Sart looked behind her. Seeing no one, she skipped backward in a zig-zag pattern, angling herself toward her pack. Two of Barit’s people gone and two dead. That left five for her to deal with. She saw Barit and Kahs, the other saber-holder, and one densely muscled knifer visible a bit ahead of her through the trees. Only a crack of a twig behind her made her turn to see the man with the sickle-sword coming toward her. He moved quickly, and Barit and Kahs closed in on her. Sart searched for Kahs’s bow and didn’t see it; either sy had left it unstrung and useless, or sy had set it down not expecting trouble. Either way, Sart was thankful for that reprieve.
Barit spat something at her, and Sart darted out of the middle of the three incoming attackers. Barit still held one of her false blades in one hand, and she tried her best not to look at it. He didn’t know. The man with the sickle-sword moved like fluid over the land, cutting off Sart’s retreat.
The two who had run off to investigate the horn call could return at any moment, Sart knew. She felt a grim smile spread across her face. She hoped Culy would forgive her if she died.
She had to stay out of Barit’s way. That knife would be his choice weapon; that she knew. Sart dropped into a roll just as the sickle-sword whistled through the air toward her, swung in a wide arc by its wielder. She tumbled across the ground and leaped to her feet, darting toward Kahs. Sy hadn’t gotten hys bow, and Sart came up mere feet from hyr, spinning and landing a kick in the middle of Kahs’s stomach. The impact sent the archer flying backward, and even before sy hit the ground, Sart was on hyr, stabbing her dagger into hys draw arm just below the wrist. Kahs screamed.
Sart sprang away, but Barit caught her sword arm. The false halm knife punched into her ribcage like a fist.
It crumbled to dust.
Barit’s surprise loosened his grip on her arm, and she pounded her knee into his groin. Snapping her leg back, she kicked him in the kneecap. He crumpled to the ground, swearing. Breath leaping in Sart’s throat, she whirled to face the sickle-sword owner. Whispering a string of words, Sart pulled again on the wind, swirling it around the man’s head so the sound of her whispers would wrap around his ears. He shook his head, eyes darting to and fro as if he could shake them off. He advanced on her, and in his eyes Sart saw the certainty that she was to blame for the words in his ears. She smiled at him, showing her teeth, her whispers still hissing from her mouth in a string of nonsense words.
His sickle-sword flashed out, and she parried it, striking out with her dagger. It sliced into his shoulder, and he drew back and slashed at her again with his sword. Sart ducked below the sword and swung her leg around, cutting his leg out from under him. He stumbled to the side, but righted himself quickly. Sart reassessed the man, warily hanging back. She didn’t want to end up hooked on that sickle of his. Barit clawed at the dirt, still cursing. Kahs had torn a strip from hys shirt and tied it off around hys bleeding arm.
A wave of dizziness crashed over Sart, and she stopped the whispers. She used the moment of disorientation in the sickle-sword’s owner to dart forward and stab at his unprotected middle. He spun out of the way, clumsily swinging his sword at her. Sart parried with her dagger and struck, not at his middle, but at his leg. Her short sword, wielded in her left hand, swung out around his right knee. She felt it make contact with the back of his leg, and she pulled it toward her with a sharp motion that left the blade bloody and sent him falling to the ground. Sart kicked his sickle-sword out of his hand, stomping on his wrist and landing a kick on the side of his head. His eyes glazed and rolled backward. She leaped toward Kahs and did the same, her foot finding a target just above Kahs’s ear.
Striding toward Barit, she stepped over his crumpled form until she fully mimicked his posture with her earlier. She leveled her sword point at his throat.
“The day I see you again is the day you die,” Sart said.
The ball of her foot slammed into his chin.
She relieved the rovers of as many weapons as she could carry, as well as two waterskins and a large bundle of dried meat. Finding Kahs’s bow behind a tree, Sart stooped to slash the string with a twang. She worked as quickly as she could, knowing it wouldn’t be long before the rovers who had hurried to investigate the horn blow to the north returned. The final rover who had stayed at the camp saw her, but made no move to engage her. She gave him a look that said she commended his intelligence. He thumbed his bottom lip, face grim, but said nothing.
Her pack was heavy as she left, walking in the creek bed to disguise her footprints. Sart was sure she hadn’t seen the last of these rovers, but with several of them dead and others injured, they wouldn’t be able to catch her, even as tired as she was.
She scratched the halmer brand from her cheek as she walked, flakes of days-dried mud dropping into the murky creek.
Sart considered that lesson learned. Her nails felt good on her face.
CARIN HAD managed to keep conversation to a minimum for nearly an entire moon. She saw the questions in Ryd’s eyes often, and sometimes he would open his mouth as if to speak, but he never voiced them. For that, she was thankful. She had no need of discussing something even she did not understand. Her body hummed like a struck dulcimer string, and when she sat still enough, she felt as though she might gather that hum until even Ryd could hear it. He seemed unaware of her state, though he still treated her with wariness as though she might collapse again. Carin wasn’t entirely sure he was wrong.
They had finished the last of the food she had packed turns before, and Carin thought she would have gladly traded one of her hands for a single pocket of Dyava’s making. With each league she and Ryd covered, her life in Haveranth seemed to recede like a dream more than simple distance.
In the bloom turn of Gather, the moon’s fullness floating through the azure summer sky with her sister trailing beside her, Carin realized they were not alone.
The feeling came first as a hunch, the woods around them growing sometimes too quiet with even the buzzing of insects fading before resuming as if the animals had been startled into silence. The next day, Carin heard the death-scream of a saiga and felt sure it had not died at the teeth of a hunting tiger. She motioned to Ryd to walk beside her.
“I think we are being followed,” she said. The very notion of it felt ludicrous, but then, had anyone told her in the summer before last harvest that she would be walking westward with Ryd, Nameless and exiled, she would have thought the person had gotten into the sparkleaf and mixed it with fermented goat’s milk to cause hallucinations.
Ryd’s face told her he didn’t believe her, and Carin shrugged.
The next night clouds rolled in and it rained. Carin sat beneath a maha tree, attempting to start a fire with flint and tinder that would not catch. Carin sat cross-legged on wet ground, half on a tree root and half on dirt. Frustration made her want to throw her flint into the Bemin. She guarded the small pile of tinder, dried sycamore leaves she had plucked and left beside the fire in the days before, and grasses she had done the same with and brushed them with fish oil. The sparks from the flint fell on the tinder and smoldered into nothingness. Ryd left the camp to search for dry wood to use and had not returned, and Carin felt dampness seep through her trousers, wetting her skin.
Surly, she struck her flint again. Three sparks landed on the tinder, and she exhaled slowly, watching them brighten into a deep orange before fading once more. She struck the flint again. Then again. Each time sparks landed, but they did not catch. At the birth of the new moons, they had run out of the last of the food from her roundhome in Haveranth. They had with them two snared rabbits and a string of fish, but without a fire, they would either have to eat them raw or watch them rot. The clouds above were heavy and grey, pregnant and bloated with rain waiting to fall. Carin knew these summer slogs; there were at least another two to three days in this one before the sun would again pierce through the cloud cover to dry the countryside. Until then, if they wanted to eat, they would have to find some way to start a fire.
Carin bundled the tinder beneath her cloak for a moment, cradling it in her hand. All through the previous season-cycle, she had tended the village hearth-home with Ryd and Lyah and Jenin, ensuring that the fire always burned and never went out. It was ritual that those preparing for their Journeying kept that vigil, making certain that the village had fire for cooking and light to work by. But now, far from the hearths of any village, Carin realized how easy her job had been. The village hearth was sheltered by a wide pavilion, kept covered where rain could not wet the embers and blocked from winds that could disrupt the flames. There was dry fuel in abundance, much like everything else in the village. Oils to quick start banked embers into roaring flames. Dry tinder that would quickly yield bursts of fire. Logs and dried dung and peat that burned hot and bright. So many options to keep a single fire going, and here in the wilderness, Carin could not get a ball of fluff to spark to flame with her flint.
She closed her eyes, fighting back frustration. If only rain could be useful in starting fires, she thought bitterly.
The hum she had felt since collapsing seemed to rise up around her with a murmur. She took several deep breaths. She would try again in a moment.
The tinder in her hand grew warm, then hot.
Carin’s eyes snapped open, and she dropped the tinder on the ground. A tiny flame licked from it.
Heart pounding, she quickly fed it small twigs she kept bundled in her rucksack. The flame rose and grew until she could stack larger kindling on top of it. When Ryd returned with a small armful of mostly dry branches, she had the fire crackling. Carin stared into it, her left hand turned palm up on her knee. A bright red spot covered the center of her hand, and it stung like she had placed her bare skin on a hot pan.
“You got it started,” Ryd said. “Well done.”
Carin nodded, then closed her fist to cover the red mark.
They cooked all the meat that night and feasted, each eating half a rabbit and some wrinkled Early Bird apples they had found on a tree. The apples had been mushy and too sweet, but Carin made herself choke hers down anyway. The autumn apples would be starting to go to fruit soon, but Carin didn’t think they would come across many apple trees on their path westward. As they bedded down to sleep that night, Carin traced the red patch on her palm with one finger. No sparks had caught on that tinder; she knew that as well as she knew the path of the sun across the sky. That flame had come from her. How, she didn’t know. She didn’t know magic.
For the first time in several turns, she remembered the scroll Lyah had given her. When Ryd shook her to take over his watch—she hadn’t managed to sleep—she waited until his chest rose and fell with even rhythm and dug the scroll out from her rucksack, using the dim light of the small fire to read.
Much of the scroll said things she already knew, about the origins of Haveranth and the branches of magic Lyah had described. But something caught her eye. Lyah had mentioned that magic needed a catalyst to work, but she had never mentioned what that might be. In the scroll, she had written that the catalyst was different for everyone. A death in the family, or an immense trauma. Murder. Carin shuddered at that thought, of a murderer in possession of magic. It made her think of Jenin and hys killer and whether or not the hand that had wielded the knife against hyr now had unlocked some ability to twist reality with magic power. She tried to come up with a common thread between the examples Lyah had listed. Death seemed to be one, though trauma did not necessitate the death of anyone to be traumatic. Perhaps it was simply change, an immense personal change. For some, murder would be a simple thing—again Carin shuddered to consider the type of person for whom taking another’s life would be a simple thing—but for others it would alter their entire being.
The more she thought about it, the less she understood. As the rain around her grew hazy with the light of the coming dawn, Carin thought of her collapse again. What was becoming Nameless if not an immense personal change? Everyone was different; Ryd’s choice to leave Haveranth was not motivated by the same thoughts as Carin’s. They had both chosen, but chosen differently. It had yet led them to a similar path.
She thought of dyupahsy, potential. The possibility in each seed to become whatever it would. Had this potential been in her all along? Carin wondered if potential could wither and die or simply shift. Her love for Dyava, for Lyah, for her mother. For the home she had crafted with her own hands. When a villager died in Haveranth, their dwelling was burned to return them to the earth. Was that what would happen to hers?
